by Matthew Lyons

by William Squirrell

by Rachael Sterling

We’re thrilled to once again present you with a Halloween mega-issue. This year’s Flash Fear contest was filled with the ghastly and otherworldy, and the stories you’ll find below are as unsettling as they are addictive. Another great international turnout overall, and our Top 10 features writers from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Sweden.

Keep an eye out in the coming week or two for details on our next quarterly contest, and our second annual Prize Winners print anthology will be out at the end of November. But without further ado, let’s turn to these ten tales of the mad and macabre

by Jennifer Lynn Krohn

by Nicholas Siegel

by Michael Tanner

by Lindsey Baker

by Premee Mohamed

After our last two Halloween contests insisted on the involvement of some kind of monster, Flash Fear has shown that some of the most monstrously head-spinning flash fiction can be unleashed when the shackles come off. This no-holds-barred approach to horror has yielded some of our most unnerving results to date, making this contest yet again an incredibly thrilling (and difficult) one to judge.

The Top 10 that you’ll find below will be published in our forthcoming Flash Fear mega-issue, which will run on Halloween. They will also be included in next year’s Prize Winners Anthology print issue. You can check out last year’s Prize Winners Anthology here, and this year’s anthology will be available by the end of November.

But enough jibber-jabber. Let’s get to the goods.

Honorable mentions go to:

10th Place –“Sixteen Minutes” by Premee Mohamed

9th Place – “In the Grain Bin” by Lindsey Baker

8th Place –“Tingles” by Michael Tanner

7th Place –“The Locus” by Nicholas Siegel

6th Place –“All the Goldfish” by Jennifer Lynn Krohn

5th Place –“Passing” by Patrick Kelly

4th Place –“Bless You” by Wiebo Grobler

And now on to the three stories that really deserve a big hand…

3rd Place ($50)

“Masks”by Aeryn Rudel

2nd Place ($100)

“Black Stained Glass”by S.E. Casey

1st Place ($200)

“The Taxidermist’s Only Son”by Caroline Smith

Congrats to the winners and a huge thanks to everyone who participated in the Flash Fear contest. We literally couldn’t do this without you. Check back on Halloween for our Flash Fear mega-issue!

This issue features smoldering peach groves, Kratom-fueled time-space nostalgia and nonlinear worms. Time’s ticking on our#FlashFear contest. October 15th is our soft deadline (although you can probably expect our week-long Procrastinator’s Special after that). We’ll also be taking a one-issue hiatus to finalize our second-annualPrize Winners Anthologyprint edition, so we’ll be back in action with the Flash Fear mega-issue on Halloween.

by Alex Smith

by Les Bohem

by Lindsey Baker

Issue 7.12 dumps bodies in the desert, calls out specters of proto-fascists, and dangles its feet down into the sky.

This time around we’re happy to feature work by two returning contributors and one first-timer.

Under a month left to get those #FlashFear horror entries in. And keep your eyes peeled for an announcement about our forthcoming second volume of our Prize Winners print anthology, coming in late October.

by Seth Augenstein

by Cyndy Hendershot

There’s still time to take advantage of our Flash Fear contest early-bird rate, so get cracking on those early entries. Contest runs until mid-October, with the Flash Fear mega-issue appearing on Halloween.

by Sophie van Llewyn

by Corinne Mahoney

by Merran Jones

Flash Icon is here at last. We’ve got a handful of usual suspects making their way back into the Top 10, along with plenty of first-timers. This was an especially difficult contest to judge, but the results speak for themselves.

Strap those thinking caps back on for our next quarterly contest, a horror-themed contest titled #FlashFear, the issue for which will run on Halloween. We want you to run the gamut from bleak, sophisticated terror to genre splatter. Guidelines will be up within a few days.